Actress Scarlett Johansson is urging Americans to forgo global volunteer trips and recognise the needs of people in their own communities.The Lost in Translation star recently travelled to East Africa as an ambassador for charity organisation Oxfam and, as part of her trip, she witnessed first-hand the famine and devastation millions of people face every day throughout Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. But, while the kindhearted star feels lucky to be able help those less fortunate in faraway places, Johansson is encouraging her fans to make a difference in their own backyards because poverty and problems are just as prevalent in the United States. She tells Interview magazine, "You don’t even have to go that far. There are people in America who are absolutely desperate right now, who have no means to support their families, who have no opportunities to better themselves or their education - and they’re not that different from the farmers and working-class people that I visited when I went to Kenya with Oxfam. "Whether they’re in America or in Africa, people want to work. They want to have purpose. They want to provide for themselves and their families."